Philosophy and Today's Culture

Some things being said and promoted in our culture today, especially on social media, seem weird, crazy, or downright insane. I’m sure at least one example popped into your mind just now, and probably more than one. Some opinions sound outright unreasonable or unrealistic; others seem to be reasonable but you get the feeling that there’s a logic error in there somewhere because the conclusion doesn’t sound right or seems out of touch with reality. What can we do when what we hear or read contradicts what we know to be ethical or the truth? How do we even find out the truth that underlies our understanding?

The empirical sciences can give us answers, but Pope Benedict warned that scientists can be distracted by profit or hubris to go down paths that are

dangerous to humanity itself. Science, moreover, is unable to work out ethical principles; it can only accept them and recognize them as necessary to eradicate its potential pathologies. In this context, philosophy and theology become indispensable aids which must be placed alongside science in order to prevent it from proceeding on its own down a twisting path, full of unexpected accidents and not without risks. This does not mean restricting scientific research or preventing technology from producing the means for development; rather, it consists in maintaining vigilance about the sense of responsibility that reason possesses in regards to science, so that it stays on track in its service to the human being.¹

We can certainly argue that the Bible says something different or the Church teaches something different, but these arguments from authority don’t go over well in today’s “enlightened” culture in which fewer and fewer people are Christian or believe in God.

A third way to pursue the truth and present a different point of view is to argue from reason. We know that God is the primary Author of the Bible and that God founded the Church, but we sometimes forget that God created the world, and all creation, and all the laws that govern the physical and spiritual world. So when something we hear seems to contradict reality, then there can probably be found a way to find the truth using reason, by exploring more thoroughly the truths found in the physical world and coming to a deeper understanding. To use reason to come to the truth is to practice philosophy. And who better to teach us how to reason and think deeply than Thomas Aquinas who drew in great philosophers such as Aristotle, Maimonides, Averroes, and Avicenna looking at them from a distinctly Christian perspective. Even popes emphasize the importance of philosophy and of studying Thomas Aquinas’s writings as a help to understanding better ourselves and our world.

Why Study Philosophy?

The term “philosophy” means “love of wisdom. Pope John Paul sees this as something intrinsic to human nature; we are born with it. Just think of the little child asking her parent a question like “Why is the sky blue?” and then driving her parent nuts asking “Why?” again and again after every answer. In Fides et ratio, no. 3, John Paul says, “Born and nurtured when the human being first asked questions about the reason for things and their purpose, philosophy shows in different modes and forms that the desire for truth is part of human nature itself. It is an innate property of human reason to ask why things are as they are.”² Philosophy is the search for answers to the all the questions that arise in our minds: Why do human beings exist? What are we? Why are we here? None of these questions can be answered by the empirical sciences. Simply put, they are not in their areas of expertise.³ The closest the empirical sciences come to answering such questions is the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory. And as in our childhood, we ask “But why?” Why does a species want to propagate itself? Why does an individual want to live? What makes life worth living? Why are human beings so different from other animals? Why do we ask “why”? It is philosophy, a “soft” science, that attempts to answer such questions. “In our own day, scientists themselves appreciate more and more the need to be open to philosophy if they are to discover the logical and epistemological foundation for their methodology and their conclusions.”⁴ It is the domain of philosophy to take all the knowledge that the empirical sciences supply about the physical world and to speculate about them, to pursue truth beyond the physical reality we see, touch, taste, feel, hear, to the reality we know is there but can’t see, touch, taste, feel, hear, the spiritual reality, the world of reasoning and thinking. (And when philosophy has reached its limits, theology continues the pursuit of truth.)

Pope John Paul II sees two ways in which philosophy is very important. He states, in Fides et ratio, no. 5,

On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason’s drive to attain goals which render people’s lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life. At the same time, the Church considers philosophy an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it.

Philosophy is both a path to understanding truths about human beings and a help to understanding faith and to evangelizing. It may seem odd that faith needs philosophy. Ralph McInerny explains, “Faith is not derived from reason, but reason is an indispensable presupposition of it. What the human mind can grasp by its own power continues to play the role of praeparatio evangelica and praeambula fidei…. Grace builds on nature and does not destroy it.”⁵ Additionally, faith gives to philosophy things to study that philosophy could not think of on its own, so a sort of “Christian philosophy.” Pope John Paul explains,

the term [Christian philosophy] is valid, but it should not be misunderstood: it in no way intends to suggest that there is an official philosophy of the Church, since the faith as such is not a philosophy. The term seeks rather to indicate a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith. It does not therefore refer simply to a philosophy developed by Christian philosophers who have striven in their research not to contradict the faith. The term Christian philosophy includes those important developments of philosophical thinking which would not have happened without the direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith.⁶

But Pope John Paul warns that philosophy seems more interested in the limits of human knowledge and in how we come to know things, a kind of navel-gazing, rather than in gaining knowledge by pursuing the truth and in answering the deeper questions (that the empirical sciences cannot answer).⁷ Knowing “knowledge” per se, rather than using knowledge as a means to the higher end of learning the truth.⁸ This has led to the irony that, as McInerny says, “the pope [the head of the Catholic Church, not any philosopher] … has become not merely the chief defender of the faith, but the chief defender of reason as well.”⁹

If knowledge and the truths learned were subjective and relative then there could be no field of medicine or any field of science. Biology, chemistry, anatomy, are all sciences that depend on knowledge being objective and universal. There could be no typical human being nor typical functioning of any system of the body; all that knowledge would be subjective and opinion.

Why Study Thomas Aquinas?

Why study Thomas Aquinas in particular? Because he does exactly that: he pursues answers to the questions that all human beings ask. And his foundation is the implicit philosophy in such questions. Pope John Paul II, in Fides et ratio, nos. 43–44, states:

Thomas had the great merit of giving pride of place to the harmony which exists between faith and reason. Both the light of reason and the light of faith come from God, he argued; hence there can be no contradiction between them.

More radically, Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy’s proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness….

Profoundly convinced that “whatever its source, truth is of the Holy Spirit” (omne verum a quocumque dicatur a Spiritu Sancto est), Saint Thomas was impartial in his love of truth. He sought truth wherever it might be found and gave consummate demonstration of its universality. In him, the Church’s Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion for truth; and, precisely because it stays consistently within the horizon of universal, objective, and transcendent truth, his thought scales “heights unthinkable to human intelligence.” Rightly, then, he may be called an “apostle of the truth.” Looking unreservedly to truth, the realism of Thomas could recognize the objectivity of truth and produce not merely a philosophy of “what seems to be” but a philosophy of “what is.”

Renowned Teacher

Other popes besides Pope John Paul have extolled the benefits of studying the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Pope Leo XIII, declared, in Aeterni patris (1879), no. 17, that:

among the Scholastic Doctors, the chief and master of all towers Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because “he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, in a certain way seems to have inherited the intellect of all.” The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly and deservedly esteemed the special bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith. With his spirit at once humble and swift, his memory ready and tenacious, his life spotless throughout, a lover of truth for its own sake, richly endowed with human and divine science, like the sun he heated the world with the warmth of his virtues and filled it with the splendor of his teaching. Philosophy has no part which he did not touch finely at once and thoroughly; on the laws of reasoning, on God and incorporeal substances, on man and other sensible things, on human actions and their principles, he reasoned in such a manner that in him there is wanting neither a full array of questions, nor an apt disposal of the various parts, nor the best method of proceeding, nor soundness of principles or strength of argument, nor clearness and elegance of style, nor a facility for explaining what is abstruse.¹⁰

Pope Francis expounds, “Thomas’s work demonstrates both his commitment to understanding the revealed word of God in all its dimensions and, at the same time, his remarkable openness to every truth accessible to human reason. The Angelic Doctor was profoundly convinced that since God is the truth and the light that illumines all understanding, there can be no ultimate contradiction between revealed truth and the truths discovered by reason.”¹¹

Aquinas has even been memoralized in Canon Law, both the 1917 code and the most recent 1983 code.

• 1917 Code of Canon Law, can. 589.1: “Religious correctly instructed in lower disciplines shall diligently pursue philosophical studies for at least two years and sacred theology for at least four years, adhering to the teachings of D[om] Thomas.”¹³
• 1917 Code of Canon Law, can. 1366.2: “Professors shall treat studies in rational theology and philosophy and the instruction of students in these disciplines according to the system, teaching, and principles of the Angelic Doctor and hold to them religiously.”
• 1983 Code of Canon Law, can. 252.3: In seminaries, “there are to be classes in dogmatic theology, always grounded in the written word of God together with sacred tradition; through these, students are to learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation, especially with St. Thomas as a teacher.”¹⁴

Thomist Philosophy

Ralph McInerny explains that in Fides et ratio, St. John Paul II is not urging us “to be Thomists as opposed to Hegelians or phenomenologists or whatever. We are being urged to do philosophy well.” We are being urged to be Thomists, McInerny says, because “Thomism is not just another system.”

The great presupposition of doing philosophy well is that one begin well. The beginnings of philosophy are not acquired in Philosophy 101. They are had before one begins the study of philosophy. The principles or starting points of philosophy are the truths that any human person can be expected already to know. Philosophy moves off from them, not to replace or abandon them, but to develop their implications. Any philosophical position that is at variance with these starting points has gone off the rails.¹⁵

John Paul calls these starting points that any human person can be expected already to know “implicit philosophy.”¹⁶ He says, “Once reason successfully intuits and formulates the first universal principles of being and correctly draws from them conclusions which are coherent both logically and ethically, then it may be called right reason or, as the ancients called it, orthós logos, recta ratio.”¹⁷

One caveat: There is a difference between Thomist philosophy and the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. There are different schools of Thomist philosophy¹⁸:

· Neo-scholastic Thomism (see, for example, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Leo Elders)

· Existential Thomism (see, for example, Étienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain)

· Laval or River Forest Thomism (see, for example, Charles De Koninck, James A. Weisheipl, OP, William A. Wallace, OP, and Benedict Ashley, OP)

· Transcendental Thomism (see, for example, Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan)

· Lublin Thomism (see, for example, Edmund Husserl (the father of phenomenology), Max Scheler, Karol Wojtyla)

· Analytical Thomism (see, for example, John Haldane, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, also Elizabeth Anscombe and her husband Peter Geach, Germain Grisez, and John Finnis)

My recommendation is to leave aside the different schools and focus on reading Thomas Aquinas himself. You can pick up the different schools when you go to graduate school for your Ph.D. Instead, read the Summa theologiae, Thomas’s summary of theology. If five volumes and 3,000 pages¹⁹ seems too daunting, then start with Peter’s Kreeft’s A Shorter Summa at 162 pages covering essential parts.²⁰ But please don’t stop there, do start reading the Summa itself. Believe it or not, it grows on you over time.

Notes

¹ Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Participants in a Congress Held on the Occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Publication of Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Fides et ratio, October 16, 2008, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/october/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20081016_x-fides-et-ratio.html.

² John Paul II, encyclical Fides et ratio (1998), https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html.

³ “Science cannot replace philosophy and revelation by giving an exhaustive answer to man’s most radical questions: questions about the meaning of living and dying, about ultimate values, and about the nature of progress itself.” Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 6, 2006, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/november/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20061106_academy-sciences.html.

⁴ Pope Benedict XVI, Address to Participants in the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 28, 2010, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2010/october/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20101028_pont-academy-sciences.html.

⁵ Ralph, McInerny, “Thomistic Natural Law and Aristotelian Philosophy,” in St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. John Goyette, Mark S. Latkovic, and Richard S. Myers (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press), 36–37.

⁶ John Paul II, Fides et ratio, no. 76.

⁷ See also, Pope Benedict XVI, Lecture at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” January 17, 2008: “To put it from the point of view of the structure of the university: there is a danger that philosophy, no longer considering itself capable of its true task, will degenerate into positivism; and that theology, with its message addressed to reason, will be limited to the private sphere of a more or less numerous group.” https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2008/january/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20080117_la-sapienza.html.

⁸ This is related to relativism: if everyone has their own truth (and it is true even if it competes with or contradicts someone else’s “truth”) then we can’t really know the truth about anything.

⁹ McInerny, “Thomistic Natural Law and Aristotelian Philosophy,” 37.

¹⁰ Leo XIII, Aeterni patris (1879), no. 17, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html. See also, Etsi nos (On Conditions in Italy; 1882), no. 18, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15021882_etsi-nos.html; Providentissimus Deus (On the Study of Holy Scripture; 1893), https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18111893_providentissimus-deus.html; Depuis le jour (On the Education of the Clergy; 1899), https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_08091899_depuis-le-jour.html.

¹¹ See also, Pope Francis, Address to the Participants in the Workshop “Aquinas’s Social Ontology and Natural Law in Perspective,” March 7, 2024, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2024/documents/20240307-messaggio-laboratorio-pass.html.

¹² “In 1917, publishing the Canon Law, Pope Benedict XV ordered the method, doctrines, and principles of St. Thomas to be followed (can. 1366, § 2) and gave as reference the decree of the Sacred Congregation approving the 24 Theses,” “The 24 Thomistic Theses,” http://www.catholicapologetics.info/catholicteaching/philosophy/thomast.htm.

¹³ The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, ed. Edward N. Peters (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2001).

¹⁴ Code of Canon Law: Latin-English Edition, trans. Canon Law Society of America (Washington , D.C.: Canon Law Society of America, 1999).

¹⁵ McInerny, “Thomistic Natural Law and Aristotelian Philosophy,” 37–38.

¹⁶ John Paul II, Fides et ratio, no. 4.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ Edward Feser, “The Thomistic tradition, Part I” (October 15, 2009). http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/10/thomistic-tradition-part-i.html; Wikipedia, s.v. Thomism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomism. See also, part 2, Edward Feser, “The Thomistic tradition, Part II” (October 18, 2009), http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2009/10/thomistic-tradition-part-ii.html.

¹⁹ Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, 5 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1948; Notre Dame, Ind.: Christian Classics, 1981), https://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html. Note: While the title of the five-volume set is Summa theologica (theological summary), scholars refer to this work as the Summa theologiae (summary of theology) as the latter title is more accurate.

²⁰ Peter Kreeft, A Shorter Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).